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ZWICKAU.
Zwickau, lhe fifth in importance among the industrial towns of the
Kingdom of Saxony and the chief centre of the Saxon coal-mining industry, lies
in a valley watered by the Zwickauer Mulde, one of the many small unnavigable
rivers which rise in the Erzgebirge and find their way into the Elbe. Like
Chemnitz, from which it is about 20 miles distant in a south-westerly direction, the
town stands at a considerable height (some 900 feet) above the sea level, and its
climate, like that of Chemnitz, is considered somewhat harsh. Of the two towns,
Zwickau is, however, the more smoky, owing to a number of the pit-shafts of
some of the largest coal mines of the district being well inside the municipal
area, and within a few minutes’ walk of the centre of the town ; while some
50 to 60 pit-shafts are being worked within a radius of three or four miles. The
existence of coal mines within the urban boundary has rendered large tracts of
the town area unsafe for building purposes, with the result that open spaces
abound. This, combined with the fact that the municipality owns much of the
land in and about the town, has in some degree prevented the place from
acquiring the depressing exterior which usually characterises a coal-mining
town. Of the whole municipal area, less than one-fifth is built upon, and less
than one-fourth is occupied by buildings, streets, roads, and railways combined.
Over three-fourths, therefore, consists of open land, and the greater part
of this is under crops or timber. The space occupied until the end of the
17th century by a ring of fortifications now forms a clearly-defined circle of
wide modern streets, whose names (Schulgraben, Moritzgraben, Schlossgraben r
Mühlgraben) perpetuate the memory of the moats which they have superseded.
This continuous ring expands at intervals into tree-planted promenades, and
forms a line of demarcation between the picturesque old town, with its narrow
(but never squalid) streets, and the more prosaic modern town which has grown up
around it, with the development of the coal-mining and other industries of the
district. The facilities for open-air recreation are ample. The city park,
with an area of 104 acres (including 42 acres of ornamental water)
occupies a central position, accessible from almost any part of Zwickau in
20 or 25 minutes on foot, or in 10 minutes or less on the electric tramway.
The municipality, however, deeming it necessary to make even more
ample provision in this respect, has lately bought 300 acres of forest about two
and a half miles from the centre of the town (but still within the municipal
boundary), and is spending considerable sums in rendering this property
attractive as a holiday resort for the people by cutting pathways through the
wood, supplying rustic benches, and constructing roads connecting the new
park with the inner town. Already the Weissenborner Wald (as this new
recreation ground is called) has become by far the most popular place of openair
resort for the people of Zwickau.
To anyone coming from Chemnitz, or even from the much less populous
lace-making town of Plauen, Zwickau appears an exceedingly quiet place, with
scarcely any vehicular traffic beyond that of the electric tramways, and with a
population from which the industrial working-class element seems curiously
absent. This, it would seem, is in part due to the fact that about 12,000, out
of a total of some 20,000, industrial wage-earners in Zwickau are coal miners,
of whom one-half are sleeping while the other half are on the day-shift. A large proportion
of the miners and other industrial workpeople, moreover, have but little
occasion to come into the business part of the town except for their purchases,
as they live in one or other of the surrounding villages, and go to and from
their work on bicycles or by train. The presence of a large official population and
of a numerous as well as prosperous trading community, too, has prevented the
town from acquiring a very pronounced industrial aspect. There are, for
instance, in Zwickau the various offices connected with the seat of a provincial
and district government, a provincial court of justice, a factory inspectorate, a
mines inspectorate, an inland revenue department, a district railway inspectorate,,
a district prison for men (with about 1,000 inmates), and the headquarters of a
militia division.
The numbers and evident prosperity of the trading population are due tothe
position of the town amidst a large group of populous industrial villages
whose inhabitants come to Zwickau to make their purchases. There are, in
fact, within a radius of about six miles of the town, no less than 54 industrial
